Beat-Looking Bike? Try New Paint

Sometimes the most interesting product isn’t a product at all, but a service. Walking the Sea Otter Expo, we spied several eye-catching frame paint jobs at an exhibitor and walked over to inspect.

Joe’s Carbon Solutions does carbon frame repair, but also has a solid business in custom frame painting. The company started out painting for Kestrel and Calfee 25 years ago, and several years back hung out their own shingle.

They paint new or used frames, metal and carbon. You can have a new, custom-made frame sent to them for finishing or send them a restoration job. Simple, single color paint jobs start at $400, although customs can reach much more. And Joe’s claims a short turnaround time of as little as a week. But what we liked was the originality and innovation.

They’re experimenting with a paint that mimics the look of chrome without the caustic chemical treatment (or weight) of the real thing. With the exception of detailed designs, all logos are masked and stenciled, not decals. And they work with two external designers, one of whom is a cyclist and one of whom isn’t, so if you want to match, say, the paint job on a Mercedes-Petronas F1 car, or color-match a favorite hue, they can create an original design to fulfill your wishes.

Joe’s had several interesting paint jobs on display: A Cervelo RCa owned by sales VP Jim Pyatt, which featured a scratch- and chip-resistant paint job, had zero blemishes after what Pyatt claims is at least 10,000 road miles; it looked literally brand new. There was also a gorgeous Orbea Orca with a deep metallic luster called prismatic that appears to shift color depending on your angle. This one skewed deep black to emerald green in shifting light.

Last was this creative take on Santa Cruz’s new Stigmata, in the standard paint scheme but different colors. The contrast pink and blue panels were done with a brush rather than a spray gun, so there’s a subtle texture to the hues that adds depth and character.

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